Table of contents:
Video: Esther Perel. Right To Left. Part 1 - Relationships, Reviews, Sex
- Right to left. Why people cheat and can cheating be avoided
- Esther Perel
- Moscow. Bombora, 2018
We publish excerpts from the book by Esther Perel
Is it necessary to expose secret love? Does passion have an expiration date? Are there such desires that no one, even the most successful marriage, is able to fulfill? How to find a subtle balance between emotional needs and erotic yearnings? Has monogamy become obsolete? Psychotherapist Esther Perel answers these and other questions in her book
Dossier
Esther Perel is a practicing psychotherapist, world renowned specialist in matters of love and family life. More than 18 million people have watched her TED talks.
For me, these questions are at the heart of a relationship. Unfortunately, most couples only ask them for the first time when a crisis of infidelity hits them. The disaster pushes us to get to the bottom of things.
I urge you not to wait for a hurricane, but to deal with these issues in good weather. Having a trusting conversation about what pulls us across the line and what fears accompany this can bring partners in a relationship closer
Any desires, even inappropriate ones, are an integral part of our human nature. As much as we want to reduce cheating to sex and lying, I prefer to use infidelity as a portal to explore the complex landscape of relationships and the boundaries we set to hold them together.
Infidelity brings us face to face with the changeable and opposing forces of passion: temptation, lust, longing, love and its impossibility, relief, walking in a vicious circle, guilt, sadness, sinfulness, control, insanity of suspicion, a monstrous desire for revenge, a tragic outcome.
Be prepared: Analyzing these questions requires a journey through a maze of irrational forces. With love everything is so confusing; with infidelity is even more confusing. But it opens a window to the hidden corners of the human heart
New shame
Divorce. This word comes up over and over again in all the fierce debate about infidelity on the web and in real life. If you are thinking about cheating, get a divorce. If you are unhappy enough to change, you are unhappy enough to leave forever.
Divorce was once considered a stigma. Now it's a shame to stay when you can leave
The most famous example is Hillary Clinton. Many women who otherwise admire her have never been able to recover from her decision to stay with her husband when she had every opportunity to leave him. "Doesn't she respect herself?"
Of course, there are times when divorce is inevitable, logical, or simply desirable for all interested parties. But is this the only correct choice?
When we suffer pain and humiliation, we risk confusing our reactions to cheating with our feelings about relationships in general.
History is being rewritten, bridges are burned along with wedding photographs, and children are dividing their lives into two houses.
Rapid divorces do not provide an opportunity to overcome difficulties, restore and strengthen relationships. They are detrimental to couples who want to learn from their mistakes and grow together
In fact, the problem with intolerant, emotional and categorical conversations about infidelity is that they cut off any chance of deeper understanding, and therefore hope and healing, both together and separately.
Condemning cheating makes marriages more fragile. The more I talk with people who have faced treason - the traitor himself, his devoted partner, lovers, children - the more I feel the need to move away from the idea of life and love as spheres where there is always the right and the guilty.
Bitterness, a desire for revenge, and endless arguments will do nothing. Here is a case in point - a woman whose resentment was so great that she told her five-year-old son about her husband's many years of adultery, "because the son should know why mommy is crying."
Although infidelity has become one of the key motivations for divorce, a large number of couples remain together despite infidelity. But for how long? And on what terms? Do they have a chance to become stronger in the end? Or do they bury treason under a mountain of shame and mistrust?
Their future and the future of their relationship depends on how well they will be able to digest what happened.
In the Western world today, most people go through a long-term relationship or marriage two or three times in their lives. It happens that all these relationships are built with the same person.
